Thirteen PC Games

Hey, Sis. Do you think the folks would pop the $$ so that my ferret can get a tummy tuck? Cuz he’s getting FAT.

The average man spends 23 years of his life (or more) asleep, but the average PC gamer spends only 12 years of his life asleep. He spends 42 years of his life playing PC games, and yeah, sorry, I’m making shit up again.

Below the fold: 12 PC games I dearly loved at one time or another, plus one my son and I await with exceptional impatience. How many of these have you played?

1. Ultima IV, Quest of the Avatar (1985). No such list would be complete without an embarrassment like Quest of the Avatar.

Picture this: your goal isn’t to kill every monster in sight and ultimately defeat the evil overlord, preventing the land from succumbing to an eternity of evil and despair. Your goal is to commit yourself to a life of virtue. How much fun is that?

The object of the game is to focus on the main character’s development in virtuous life, and become a spiritual leader and an example to the people of the world of Britannia. The game follows the protagonist’s struggle to understand and exercise the Eight Virtues. After proving his or her understanding in each of the virtues, locating several artifacts and finally descending into the dungeon called the Stygian Abyss to gain access to the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom, the protagonist becomes an Avatar.

What can I say, there weren’t a lot of games to choose from back then. Which doesn’t explain why I stuck with this series through Ultima IX.

2. Civ 1 (1991). For three incarnations of Civilization (four, if you count the delightful Alpha Centauri), game designer Sid Meier understood what gamers want from a game: the chance to bash hell out of your computer opponents and rule the world. Alpha Centauri rocked because your opponents had incredibly snotty attitudes, so obnoxious you would never dream of making peace with them, particularly when the alternative — total annihilation — meant your vile enemy would be marched off to the interrogation chamber. Huge metal doors would clang shut, and your enemy’s screams would fade into the distance. It was sweet. But in Civ IV, Meier and company got soft. They created a game in which military conquest was damned near impossible, even on the game’s easiest setting. Feh!

Civilization I was the first game ever to keep me up half the night. Those disks are long gone, but I still play both Civ III and Alpha Centauri.

3. Heroes of Might and Magic (1995). Here’s another series that got crappier with each incarnation. In the first game, the graphics were cheesy but the music was ethereal. You, the hero, roamed the countryside, gathering gold and resources in order to build the monster-making buildings which populated your army. When you met an opposing force, you would switch to a more detailed graphic mode wherein you’d get to watch your monsters battle the computer’s monsters. Gold, monsters, killing: the Holy Trinity of PC gaming.

4. Balance of Power (1986). Stephen Colbert would love the box art:

You play either as the US President or Soviet Premier. Over the course of eight years (turns), you try to maximize prestige while avoiding nuclear war. The computer throws incident after incident at you, and you have to choose your country’s response. Your AI opponent makes his response, and you inevitably must decide between backing down (with a loss of prestige) or escalating (with the potential for initiating a nuclear war).

Start a nuclear war, and you get this message: “You have ignited a nuclear war. And no, there is no animated display of a mushroom cloud with parts of bodies flying through the air. We do not reward failure.”

Nah, it wasn’t much fun, but it was memorable.

5. SimEarth (1990). Here’s a game I wish had been updated — it’s all about evolution. As best I can recall, you could control a few meteorologic variables, and your planet’s life forms thrive or become extinct, adapt, evolve, often for no apparent reason. As the Wikipedia article notes, it’s more a toy than a game. The “goal,” such as it is, was to evolve a sentient life form. I don’t think I ever “won.”

I think the manual was longer and more detailed than my college Population Ecology textbook.

6. Lemmings (1991). Your goal here was to keep the lemmings from killing themselves (of course). Each level was a different puzzle; usually, if you did nothing to intervene, the lemmings would march to their doom, be it water, lava, or a fall from a splatworthy height. You had to order the lemmings to dig holes, build stairs, etc., to save them from themselves. Cool game, and you can play it for free online.

7. Populous (1989). Sigh. They seemed like such great graphics at the time.

Populous was what is still called a God game. You (God) try to shepherd your people to ever greater accomplishments, with the ultimate goal of clobbering some other poor shmuck’s (God’s) people.

Latter day God games include Black and White I and II (II isn’t bad), SimAnt (’twas great fun; you got to invade houses), and the as yet unreleased Spore, number thirteen on today’s list.

8. Bad Mojo (1996). You’re a Berkeley grad student who steals money from your lab’s research grant . . . and now you’re off to Mexico! But before you can escape your dingy apartment, an accident with your dead mother’s enchanted locket turns you into a cockroach. Nothing to do now but wander the apartment, avoiding spiders and bare electrical wires as you unravel the story of your past, discover who your parents truly are, and achieve both redemption and the return to a two-legged form.

It may be 11 years old, but the graphics are surprisingly good, as is the game play. I’ve written more on Bad Mojo here.

9. Fallout 2 (1998), one of my all-time favorite games. There’s a highly flexible skill-set, a gritty, post-apocalyptic setting, fully nonlinear game play, and the best voice-acting I’ve heard in a game. (Check out the all-star cast.) Add to that some of the most memorable characters I’ve ever met — from a geeky computer expert who works for a local boss, and is paid for his troubles in junk food and women, to the Kidman- and Cruise-like young man and woman who front for the Hubology cult — and you’ve got one hell of a game.

10. Oddworld Abe’s Exoddus (1998) is my all-time favorite game. I think I must have played through it a half dozen times, and yes, I’m finally sick of it. It’s a clicky scroller: tap the command buttons quickly and accurately to make Abe do what he needs to do to free his comrades from the evil Glukkons.

The Glukkons have imprisoned Abe’s people (the Mudokons) by getting them addicted to Brew. Now they are slave labor, forced to dig up their ancestor’s bones, which is one of the key ingredients of Brew. (The other key ingredient is — SPOILER ALERT!!! — the tears of tortured Mudokons.) Abe is, let’s face it, a terrorist, a sworn enemy of the corporatist Glukkons. Over the course of the game, he kills the Glukkon’s armed thugs, kills more than a few Glukkons, too, and blows up their manufacturing facilities.

Funny? You bet. There’s scarcely a half hour of game play without a good sight gag or punch line. And when that gets old, there’s always fart possession. Admit it: haven’t you always wanted to have farts with the explosive power of dynamite, which you could control and explode at will? I knew you did.

11. Dungeon Keeper II (1999). Wow. Seems like the late 90s were a Golden Age for gamers. In DKII, you played an evil dungeon keeper. By building your dungeon correctly, you could lure vampires, skeleton warriors, trolls, and best of all! dark mistresses to your realm. You would use these baddies to conquer dashing knights, heroic kings, or other evil Keepers.

Oy. I’m getting tired. Maybe I’ll add more to this later, but I had better rap this up.

12. Armed and Dangerous (2003), the funniest game I never finished. Every cut scene was a riot. Honestly, how many PC games have anal rape jokes?

13. Spore (2008)? Likely to be the best God game ever. EVER. Watch the video and you’ll see what I mean. Better, longer video here.

Sorry I ran out of steam, folks. Leave me some comment, I’ll give you some lurve.

Um. Tomorrow.

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